I think my every-day carry keyring has enough space for a small piece of paper, which I could fill with personal information. What is the recommended wisdom on what to include? I am a bit concerned about ID theft.

At the moment my list falls into 3 groups: personal, legal and financial. The personal info includes my phone number, my next of kin's contact details, and my doctor's contact details. These are intended to be useful for identifying me if my EDC gets lost and whoever finds it wants to return it to me. Also, if my body is found dead they might as well know whose body it is, and if it is just unconscious they might want to get hold of my medical records. I am not sure whether I should include my postal address. It might be tantamount to telling burgulars which house is empty.

The legal info includes my passport number, my social security/national health number, and my driving licence number. But are these actually useful, eg if I were abroad and my passport got stolen? Or would it be enough to know my name, date and place of birth (which I have managed to memorise)?

Financial info is basically credit card numbers. I could include all the info needed for a "not present" transaction; it might be handy to be able to buy stuff even when everything else is lost/stolen. However, that seems really risky if the EDC keyring itself is stolen. Another option is to just include the card numbers, mainly so that I can cancel them if necessary. Perhaps with some light encryption, that I could undo in my head. Again, I am wondering if this stuff is really needed or whether the CC companies are used to people reporting lost cards without knowing the numbers.

I expect space to be very limited. I won't be including whole photocopies of passports etc. I am not sure about insurance numbers. I can see it makes sense to include them in a bug-out bag, but it hardly seems necessary in an EDC.

What does everyone else do? I don't recall it being mentioned in many PSKs, at least, not in detail. I suppose it's not really wilderness survival.

I would say just put a business card in your EDC kit with your normal contact info. If travelling, notify the local US consulate of your whereabouts and if you're really concerned about being found in an alley, write your US passport number on a wrist band or directly on your wrist. Putting it in your EDC kit won't help since whoever conked you will have taken it. No need for stuff like your SSN or credit card numbers.

Yes, passport offices can figure out your passport number given your name/address/DOB.

Weel if you want to carry those assorted numbers in your wallet or a kit but are fearful someone will steal it and use them. It is simple. Add a joker.

A joker is any number you decide to add, subtract, multiply or divide.

Anything that will change the base or real number. Then if you need to use the actual number reverse the process. Pin numbers can be included in a phony phone number with or without a joker.

Or you could select one number in a credit card number. 1st, 4th whatever. Raise or lower it by 1. As long as you are consistant, remember what you did and don't write down the key. Your numbers are safe and still usable.

For emergency scenarios, I'd think a phone number and your name (no address) would be all you'd need.
The phone number should be someone who probably won't be travelling with you, but that can keep
a copy of all the information you'd want a doctor or lawyer to have. The idea being that if someone
finds the name and number, hopefully they'll call the number and give the name. :-) You're still
vulnerable to social engineering attacks, but much less so than if you also include, say, an address.
Make the person who's calling give a callback number if you want.

The rest of the stuff... I've memorized mine. SSN, credit card number, etc. Not on purpose, really.
I just use the data so often it's burned in. :-)

If you want to carry the info in a form that's useful to you, but mostly unavailable to others, you
might store it in your cell phone or mp3 player.

Consider hiding the paper with sensitive information in your shoe or some other location likely
to remain attached to you.

Record the information as a message on your answering machine. If you need it, play it
back from any phone on the planet. This works best if you can control your machine from
a touch tone phone and it has some sort of passcode.

Make a web page with the information, but don't link to it from any other web page. No
search engine will find it. If you need it, manually enter the URL from any browser on the planet.

Data doesn't have to be with you to be available to you.

I would definitely shy away from any personal information other than a name and phone number of an emergency contact.

I was staying in a hotel for work a couple of years ago and paid the usual way -- with my credit card. Lo and behold someone got my number from the hotel (the only time I used the card that month) and charged up hundreds of dollars worth of pre-paid phone cards and adult toys. At least the thief had a sense of humor.

I think in today's age it's just too easy to get personal information. I shred or burn everything with more than my last name on it, and don't carry anything more than some addresses and phone numbers in my EDC. Oh yeah, and a few frequent shopping cards.

Great idea, thanks. I was going to get around to mentioning a (relatively) small memory card that could be carried on a key-chain, and carry more info than a person would ever need (maybe), but the idea of that much info available to anyone who finds it is a down-side. But if you used it with the joker idea, it's safe, available to the right person(s), and small enough to not be a pain to carry all the time. Now you've got me thinking about what I want to load... ssn, medical info, insurance info, cc#s, emergency contacts... the list could go on and on <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />.

Troy

Like already mentioned, I would think that a card like this carried in a wallet would be sufficient

Name:
Phone #:
Emergency Contact 1:
Emergency Ph #:
Emergency Contact 2:
Emergency Ph #:
Primary Physician:
Physician Ph #:
Medical Info:
Prescribed Drugs:

etc.

For personal information carried on a thumbdrive to be used by you (like CC#'s SSN etc.) I would make sure that information was encrypted! Something like a self-decrypting .exe file with a password that couldn't be cracked (in any reasonable amount of time - obviously you wouldn't use your last name or phone number on this one)

PGP or GnuPG would be a good start for encrypting a text file with such personal information on it.

An earlier thread mentioned the flash ram mp3 players for this purpose. I've ignored these until now, so I'm probably the last to know that you can get
an mp3 player / usb drive / FM radio in one tiny package. I've been looking for a small radio to add to my EDC, and this looks like a nice combination.

Some of the professional bodies and banks etc in the UK offer a service where they give you a metal tag with their postal address on the front and instructions on the reverse that to return to owner place in any post box. There is an id number engraved on the tag. It will then be sent through the post freepost to them where they check the id number against their files, retrieve your home address from their files and post the keys to your home address. I have one of these on my keyring. Contains no traceable info but will enable my keys to be sent to my home address if i lose them.

I also carry a normal work buisness card in my wallet. That way if found (or my body is <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />) then they can phone fax or write to my work where the personnel dept have next of kin contacts for me. Or if I've just lost it then then can get a message to me. Again this doesnt involve giving out my home address to anyone.

That's what I meant by "light encryption".